Pork Chops & Rice Oven Dinner

Another quick supper, this time a one-pot oven dinner, pork chops and rice cooked together. The very first meal I cooked, memorable for reasons good and bad!

Here’s to memories, the ones connecting home-cooked food and real life.

On March 31, 1970, I cooked this easy one-skillet supper. Yes, I really do recall a single meal cooked exactly 39 years ago today, perhaps more than the one cooked yesterday, all because:

It was my mother’s birthday, her 40th. It was the first meal I ever cooked. It was a disaster.

But there’s more to the story, one that demonstrates how kitchen disasters can have happy endings and how some times, no matter what is served, meals are not about the food.

Mom had a new job, she was working long hours. That morning, she jotted down her recipe for a standby pork chop supper she’d made herself many times, one so familiar that she left out one itsy bitsy detail: browning the pork chops. Oops. An experienced cook might have realized. Me, I was 11 and following her recipe to the letter.

I baked a surprise birthday cake and frosted it with blue icing, a disaster in its own right. Worse? I forgot the sugar. Oops.

Weary from her day, hungry for real food, Mom arrived home to pale pork and an inedible gooey-blue cake. Still, she was full of smiles and her characteristic hear-it-from-across-the-room laugh.

You see, five years earlier, Mom had been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer, a near-certain death sentence. Turning 40 meant she’d reached the five-year mark of breast cancer survival: she’d beaten the odds. Supper may have been a mess, but Mom – and all of us – had good reason to celebrate.

Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences.

Heat olive oil in an oven-safe skillet until shimmery on medium high. Rinse and dry the pork chops, season with salt and pepper. (Don’t forget this important step!) Drop the chops into the skillet (they should sizzle). Brown each sides, about 3 minutes each, without moving. Set the chops aside.

Stir the rice into the pan drippings, then arrange the chops over top. Atop each chop, layer a slice of onion, a ring of green pepper and a tomato round.

Pour the broth over the rice and around the meat. If the broth is lightly seasoned, sprinkle it with salt and pepper. Cover with foil and bake for 90 minutes.

ALANNA’s TIPS Mom used white rice. I use brown rice or a mix of brown and wild rice. Really, any rice will do. She also used an electric skillet, I use a cast-iron skillet. Usually, I cook pork only until it reaches a safe internal temperature of 140F or 150F. In this dish, however, the long time in the oven with plenty of liquid tenderizes the meat so it can be easily cut with no more than a fork.

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This sounds really simple and tasty. Good fodder for addition to my comfort food collection.

One question, though. I'm not a huge fan of cooked bell peppers. (A picky-eater roommate led to overexposure, since they were one of the few veggies she would eat. We made a lot of stir-fries.) Do you have any suggestions for substitution?

LOL ... Every time my brother does a similar recipe with mushroom soup, he reminds me that I used to cook this for him in the seventies. It was a success as I could not cook many things without recipes.

Robin - Just skip the pepper entirely, or you might try a poblano pepper which would add a little zip and might be enough different. I suspect that the green pepper, tomato and onion are more for 'garnish' -- ha! -- than for flavor.

Stephen ~ Thanks. Now you know!

Kalyn ~ Do you suppose this was a dish all kids could make and thus did?

Oooh! A blast from the past... I found this recipe in Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook" Book when I was a newlywed... about 39 years ago!! It really is delicious and has been a standby for a long time. Re Robin's comment: We don't like green peppers, but the sweeter red or yellow peppers are really, really good as substitutes.

Love this story. Thanks for posting it. Your mom is a very special lady! I made a cake for my mom once using a store bought angel food loaf cake and icing it with whipped creme tinted a very lovely shade of olive green (institutional green really). There's something about whipped creme that color that just says "culinary risk"! My mom was all smiles. I'm not sure if she ate it though!

Hi again Alanna...The chops thawed, we had this Sunday night...for commenter Robin: I didn't have any peppers so topped with some the tomato slice, some matchstick-cut carrots and a few leek slices. I also threw some minced garlic and rosemary in with the rice as the path to my beloved's heart is paved with garlic and rosemary...

I have a hunch that the recipe was a Minnesota Extension recipe. You assembled it, and put it in the oven when you left for church, and Sunday dinner was all ready when you returned. Meryl should recall that. It’s the green pepper rings stacked that prompted this memory.

Hi Anonymous ~ I've never had the rice turn out 'runny' - the liquid always gets soaked right up. In fact, once or twice, the rice has gotten a little crispy along the edges, a good thing. It might be a difference in the rice, perhaps the freshness of the rice. So long as the rice is cooked, I'd just cook put the chops aside and then turn up the heat on the rice/liquid and cook it down a bit. And of course, another time, use as much rice as works for you.

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Thank you for taking a moment to write! I read each and every comment, for each and every recipe. If you have a specific question, it's nearly always answered quick-quick. But I also love hearing your reactions, your curiosity, even your concerns! When you've made a recipe, I especially love to know how it turned out, what variations you made, what you'll do differently the next time. ~ Alanna